2012 Lecture Materials

SECTION I: LIFE AND ENERGYLec 1.What is life? An attempt at definition. Energy, heat, and work: Temperature and thermal equilibrium. The First Law. Why do organisms need energy? (B. Lentz)Lec 2.Mother Nature plays dice: the Boltzmann distribution, partition functions and entropy. (B. Lentz)Lec 3.Thermodynamic states and state functions. Reversible and real processes. The Second Law and free energy. (B. Lentz)

SECTION II: THE CELL: SURVEY & PREVIEWLec 4.The cell as a basic unit of life's organization. (Z. Chen)Lec 5.The cell interior as a tough neighborhood: Brownian motion and viscosity and their influence on particle motion in the cell. (Z. Chen)

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